Tuna canneries' lasting legacy

Sculptures being unveiled today honor workers who shaped S.D.

Former cannery worker Eloisa Osuna, 87, will attend today's tribute to the industry in Barrio Logan. A sculpture depicting a tuna fisherman and two cannery workers will be unveiled. (Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune)

Former cannery worker Eloisa Osuna, 87, will attend today's tribute to the industry in Barrio Logan. A sculpture depicting a tuna fisherman and two cannery workers will be unveiled. (Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune)

National City resident Eloisa Osuna, who worked for 35 years in a tuna cannery, has an issue of the Tunaville Times from December 1957, the local tuna industry's heyday.

Eloisa Osuna pointed out her friends in a 1948 photo of the San Diego Packing Co., displayed in a Barrio Logan park as a tribute to the thousands who once worked in San Diego's tuna canneries. (Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune)

Eloisa Osuna pointed out her friends in a 1948 photo of the San Diego Packing Co., displayed in a Barrio Logan park as a tribute to the thousands who once worked in San Diego's tuna canneries. (Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune)

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Eloisa Osuna got a case of tuna on her last day working at a local cannery more than a generation ago.

Today, she'll get a tribute.

The San Diego Unified Port District this morning will unveil sculptures honoring the region's cannery workers from a bygone era when San Diego was the world's tuna capital and canneries lined the waterfront from the foot of Laurel Street in San Diego to where the San Diego-Coronado Bridge now stands.

The thousands who worked at the canneries helped build the neighborhoods of Barrio Logan and Logan Heights, but they have been largely forgotten since the last cannery closed in 1986.

“It's beautiful,” Osuna, 87, said of the statues the Port District will unveil at a ceremony near the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal. “It makes me feel sad — and happy that they remembered us. I worked here for 35 years.”

The likenesses of a tuna fisherman and two cannery workers were installed in a place where employees would take their breaks, at what's now the Continental Maritime ship-repair building. The company donated a site that has been turned into a small park called Parque del Sol, across from Cesar Chavez Park.

Many say the tribute is long overdue; the tuna industry dominated the city's economy for much of the 20th century and left a lasting legacy.

San Diegans began fishing for tuna in the 1880s, but it wasn't until the turn of the last century, after the art of canning albacore had been perfected, that the industry exploded.

In 1911, Pacific Tuna Canning, at the foot of F Street, became the first cannery to process tuna. By 1920, San Diego was home to 10 canneries.

At its height in the early 1950s, the industry generated $65 million for the local economy — about $550 million in today's dollars, said University of San Diego economist Alan Gin — and employed more than 17,000 workers. Some of the other big names were Premier Packing, Bumble Bee and Van Camp Sea Food.

The San Diego tuna industry began to decline in the 1970s because of stricter fishing regulations enacted to protect dolphins and increased foreign competition.

While they no longer operate canneries locally, giant tuna canners Bumble Bee Foods and Chicken of the Sea International still maintain their headquarters in San Diego.

Generations of local families made their living from tuna. The men worked the fishing boats, while the women processed and packed tuna at the canneries.

“The women wore a sign pinned to their back, and every time they got another tray, a hole was punched on it,” said Maggie Walton, an exhibit designer at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. “They got paid by how many trays they finished.”

Latinos were a major part of the cannery work force because “the barrio areas is where the canneries ended up being,” San Diego historian Richard Crawford said.